Monday, September 6, 2010

Painting Pomo Dancers & the Speaking Land

The Pomo Project began with a Pomo dancer's response to my art work. Most traditional Pomo culture available to experience today, at least as a non-Pomo person, inhabits the beautiful dancers, dance songs, & regalia.

So naturally I'm painting dancers.

Armando Williams saw something in my work that he trusted. He has a beautiful way of holding confidence in me & the other artists. He helps us learn Pomo medicine, then believes that what we bring create comes from spirit.

I both love this approach & tremble within it. How can what I do be right? Ah. Relaxing into the mystery & trusting. Oooh. Hard work, & joyous.

This 18 x 24" acrylic painting, Dancer & Swallows, is actually painted over an older work. In the flush of a relationship that later fell apart, I painted my dear one & me sitting romantically among the wonderful skimming violet-green swallows of the Laguna de Santa Rosa. After things ended badly, I gessoed out the figures, leaving the swallows ready for some better purpose.

The twist that Armando's faith allows to emerge in my paintings is something I see in the Pomo dancers' ceremony, feel in their rhythms: that dancing keeps life healthy, heals the earth, invigorates our sacred relationship to other life.

This dancer's movement & prayer helps the swallows be abundant. Their abundance helps her dance.

This isn't something any Pomo person told me. It's something the land speaks. I'm attracted to Pomo & other native people because I hear the language of the land in their seeing & doing. Like everyone, I've starved to hear the fact of conscious land spoken aloud.

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Pomo Honoring in Sebastopol

Some folks in Sebastopol, California, are supporting public recognition of Pomo people & culture. Our first human residents of Sonoma County, despite generations of suffering since European contact, have maintained wisdom traditions of great value. We're helping people to learn Pomo history, appreciate Pomo crafts & ceremony, & invite vital Pomo input into community decision processes. This site will describe how this project is unfolding & ways to get involved.

About Me

Raised by trees in New England & further educated by forests in Oregon & California. For 35 years I've been painting to restore harmony with all our relations. I'm a founding member of Sebastopol Gallery & support the work of Honor the Earth. A life-threatening illness brought out my affinity for NDNs. I yearn to help restore Native values to American culture & policy. Meanwhile my two daughters keep me in line.